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We are pleased to announce Shakthi Nataraj as the most recent winner of the Jonathan T. Yeh Award for Student Scholarship in Asian and Asian American Folklore, presented by The Transnational Asia/Pacific Section of the American Folklore Society. The award aims to foster and promote graduate and undergraduate students in the early stages of their careers, encourage advanced scholarly research and publication on Asian and/or Asian American folklore subjects, and support AFS members who want to participate more actively in the Society. The $500 prize winner will be announced at the AFS annual meeting for the best student paper that contributes to Asian and/or Asian American folklore studies through research and analysis. It is expected that the award recipient will present his/her paper at the AFS annual conference.

Shakthi is completing her PhD in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research explores the way the figure of "transgender" has become a potent political symbol in Tamil Nadu, South India, for social actors ranging from popular tabloid writers to right-wing Hindu affiliates. She tracks the way activists and their interlocutors circulate different "texts of transgender”, in novels, poems, speeches, and jokes, both Tamil and English. By illustrating how historical fragments coalesce and dissipate as "transgender" flows in and out of social contexts, she shows that debates seemingly about sexual identity often condense broader political claims spanning many time periods, for transgender- and non-transgender identified persons alike. 

Visiting lecturer in Folklore Dr. Jeana Jorgensen has contributed a chapter to New Approaches to Teaching Folk and Fairy Tales.

The book, edited by Christa C. Jones and Claudia Schwabe and published through Utah State University Press, "introduces scholarly perspectives on how to teach fairy tales in a variety of courses and academic disciplines... Challenging the fairy-tale canon as represented by the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen, and Walt Disney, contributors reveal an astonishingly diverse fairy-tale landscape."

Professor Charles Briggs was awarded the Graduate Student Mentor Award by the Society for Medical Anthropology and the Medical Anthropology Student Association at the AAA Annual Meeting in Minneapolis. The Award "recognizes excellence in graduate student mentorship, and is aimed at senior or mid-career scholars who have demonstrated an ongoing commitment to teaching and mentorship throughout their careers, particularly those who have taken the time to successfully guide their MA and PhD students through fieldwork and the thesis or dissertation writing process."

We are pleased to announce that world-renowned folklorist Galit Hasan-Rokem will be the visiting professor of Folklore and Anthropology for Fall Semester 2016. 

We are pleased to announce that the 2014-15 recipient of the Jeanne P. Steager Memorial Prize in Folklore is History of Art Ph.D. Candidate and Folklore Designated Emphasis student Elaine Yau.

The Jeanne P. Steager Memorial Prize in Folklore is open to all UC Berkeley students of any department and is awarded annually to a student who has made an outstanding contribution in folklore during the academic year. The nature of the entry is not restricted; it may include papers based on library research, or field projects. Criteria for selection include originality, excellence, and importance to the field of folklore.